


Pride.

by glanmire



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Bisexuality, F/F, Femslash, Homophobia, M/M, Real world allegory, The 2016 Orlando Shooting, UST
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:12:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7351078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glanmire/pseuds/glanmire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anti-mutant rhetoric is at an all-time high. It's more difficult than ever to be a mutant who doesn't 'pass'.<br/>When there's an attack on the mutant community, Charles and Erik both want to respond in very different ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Queen

**Author's Note:**

> It has been nearly two years since I wrote a fanfic. I've been battling mental illness, and thankfully come out the other side. Thank you to every person who left a comment encouraging me to come back. I read them all, and each and every one of them helped. 
> 
> This story is obviously drawn from the recent events in Orlando. I wrote it as a way to process what happened, as an LGBT writer. I've always loved X-Men as a parallel for LGBT/Civil Rights, and I found it helpful to imagine that some of us might be made of steel, able to fight back, and have a special school with kick-ass technology. Most of all though, it's comforting to imagine ourselves as heroes, when we're so often told we are the villain.

Mystique and Angel would go to Genes on Thursdays sometimes, Angel for the inclusive atmosphere, Mystique because they served the best tequila in the city.

Genes was the first mutant-owned club of its kind in the city, and had seen its fair share of bricks through its window. Anti-mutant sentiment was everywhere, and Angel walked briskly with her wings tucked in and Mystique with her blonde hair flowing. They were proud, but not reckless. Not these days.   
  
Angel nudged Mystique out of her musings. “See that?” she asked, pointing at the graffiti spanning the wall across from them. On top of years' worth of flyers was the phrase ‘ _Burn The Abominations!_!’ sprayed in bright red. It dripped in places, a trickle down the wall.   
“Think it’s People Against Mutants again?” Mystique wondered, her voice low in anger. Angel nodded, pulling her jacket closer around her.  
“They’ve made massive gains in this area - leeching Republican votes by the day, by the sounds of it,” Angel said. For a former stripper, she followed politics closely.  
“I just wish that the fated arrival of a third strong party in America was like, for the Green Party, or something, and not you know, PAM,” Mystique said, and Angel laughed, and just like that the graffiti seemed smaller, just the words of some idiots with a vendetta on a wall. They couldn't touch her. 

"Saying that," Angel teased, " _some_ people do like mutants. Maybe one mutant in particular…” and she grabbed Mystique's hand. “Stop that!” Mystique said, but she was smiling. The men she’d known had never been able to tease her: Hank was too shy, Erik too stoic. Angel though, she was leagues ahead of Mystique when it came to, well, mystique. She liked that. They dropped hands again though, after a second, and the subject changed.  
  
“You know Hank is thinking of getting into politics since this PAM nonsense?” Angel asked her as they queued for Genes. It was never heavily crowded, as a mutant club, but the security knew the school was nearby and had to weed out the over-eager kids. _At least they’re not still checking mutant status_ , Mystique thought. They’d dropped that policy since it began pissing off humans, and human-passing mutants, like herself. _Anyone who wants in should be allowed in. Some people get their mutations late anyway.  
_ “He didn’t tell me, no,” she said in reply to Angel, rummaging for the ID that actually matched the blonde facade she was wearing. “We don’t talk as much these days.”  
“Yeah, he says you can only fight bigotry by showing an example, by proving them wrong,” Angel said, waving her ID at Colossus, who stood at the door. _Apparently men with steel bodies make good bouncers. Who’d have known._  
“Hey - isn’t that just respectability politics?” Mystique asked. “I mean, some of us are dangerous, and like it that way. Maybe they should feel threatened for once.” Angel turned, perplexed, her brow wrinkled. “  
"You don’t mean that-” but she didn’t finish that sentence.

There was no noise, no warning. One second Angel was standing under the fluorescent lights of the club, and then the wall exploded outwards onto them.  
  
Mystique’s world was red and black and attacking her from all sides. She was on her back, pieces of walls strewn over her, rubble around, in her eyes. All she could hear was the pounding of her own ears.  
“Angel?” she yelled, but her voice was lost in the chaos. Vague shapes pushed past her, running over her, and she curled tighter into a ball, her ribs screaming with the movement. She heard people cry out. She heard cellphones ring and ring in pockets. In the distance, there were sirens. A shadow above her, grey in the blackness.  
“Angel?” she asked again, hoarse, but they were too broad, too tall. Cool metallic hands scooped her up, but she stretched out her fingers, reaching for her friend.  
  
  
-   
  
Most nights, Charles left the chess set untouched. The match had been going on for months, but those were the perils when one of the players was a radical, off smuggling arms or raising donations or whatever this month’s scheme was. Sometimes he’d return to his room to see a black bishop moved, his own white pawn on its side, with a note scrawled on a napkin saying “Check.”  
Even though he didn’t disturb it, Charles would stare at the board most evenings, thinking through a thousand moves, before Erik would saunter in, briefly assess, and attack again. This had always been their dynamic.  
  
This time, when he wheeled himself into his room, he saw a tall figure standing by the open window. A black knight had moved, and was threatening his queen. “Erik,” he said. It was a greeting, a question. “Charles,” said the man who called himself Magneto now, “It’s Mystique.”  
Charles could feel a numbness where he should feel something coming from Erik, an emotion tied to his words, a flurry of thoughts, of worry. There was nothing but silence.   
“It was in that mutant club downtown. Lone bomber. They’re still counting casualties.”   
“Get me down there. Call a team. Whatever needs to be done.”  
“I already have people on the way. I didn’t want to disturb the children.”  
“This is not - no, the Brotherhood have no place there. They’ll aggravate the situation.”  
Erik’s eyes narrowed. “No place?” he says, so low he could barely be heard. “No place, when their brothers and sisters have just been slaughtered for the crime of daring to have a place where they could be themselves, unafraid?”  
“I only mean the Brotherhood will unnecessarily provoke the police. This is a crisis, not a political moment, Erik. Our priority is making sure people get out safely.”  
Erik stepped forward, bitter steel in his voice and his eyes. “Charles, our _priority_ is making sure that this doesn’t happen again. That they know we won’t take this lying down. The arc of time does not bend towards justice without a strong push.”  
  
Charles closed his eyes, and drew a long breath. “Please. Take me to Raven.”  
When he opened them, Erik’s face was expressionless once more, the mask replaced over his emotions, the helmut clouding his thoughts from Charles. He was a non-entity, a non-presence, where once he had been so _alive.  
_ They left the mansion, himself and a ghost, to count the living and the dead. 


	2. Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles deals with the aftermath of the tragedy, and worries about his oldest friend.

The garden was almost always cool, even in the summer. Charles would come here, roll in his chair under the towering trees, and tried not to hear the world think.  
People always had to think though, and Charles had to hear them.

 _The Brotherhood is arming in self-defence_ , the trees told him, their long billowing hands moving gently in the wind. He knew it already. Rumours and whispers had jumped from mind to mind across the country, some red with indignation, some with a hint of pride.  
They spoke of the Brotherhood like they were terrorists - like they were saviours.  
  
Charles did not want to here about Erik’s political agenda right now. He didn’t want to hear about anything.  
He told the trees to shut up. They did not argue with him, possibly because they were not sentient at all, but just a means of processing the thoughts of thousands, a way of making his mind make sense of the influx of sound that threatened to overwhelm him sometimes.  
  
He closed his eyes.  
  
He saw Raven, under the pulsing blue lights of Genes, taking a pill and letting the waves of pleasure rack through her. They rippled through her body, and she rippled too, her skin shimmering from blue to green to candescent orange. Angel was laughing, her eyes scrunched up and her wings fluttering behind her, but Raven remembered her neck in particular. It was long and tanned, and begging to be kissed.  
  
Charles tried to pull himself out of this memory. This was not his place. This was Raven’s memory, Raven’s guilt, and he should not be listening.  
He focused on the garden, on the trees, and did not think about the pulsing lights, and those fluttering wings, and after a while, they began to dissolve away, someone else’s ghosts.  
  
Further afield he could heard Hank, always thinking, always musing. Those who mocked Hank for being timid couldn’t see into his mind, and see the lightning-fast connections leap from one idea to the next without ever stumbling.  
Hank was writing a list in his thin, inelegant scrawl, the names of senators, of governors, and their phone numbers beside them. His thought process is awhirl - _maybe an appearance at a convention? - need to rally public support now it’s critical - humanise the issue - is it too soon to ask Raven?_.  
Charles was deeply familiar with this route, the long road of non-violence, of agitation and awareness. He did not wish to hear of it now.  
  
Beyond Hank, beyond Raven, were the men and women patrolling the ground with their long black rifles and thick, bullet-proof vests. The state government had sent them out to the school, which was a potential target in their eyes.  
Charles rankled at the idea that he could not keep his home and his students safe. If he wished to, he could toss those soldiers aside like used toys. He could force them to walk on their hands, to do backflips, to eat their own guns. They were nothing compared to what he could do.  
He realised his knuckles were clenched tight around the arms of his chair, and he loosened his grip, and took a long breath. The offer of protection for the school was well-intentioned, he assured himself. It was symbolic of the state standing with them. There was no need to resent the soldiers’ presence, even if he was the only one who could feel their repulsion at Raven’s skin. 

It grew dark around him before Charles was nearly ready to come back. It was truly cold by then in the shadows of the trees, by the newly turned soil underneath. The voices had begun to quieten now, as people began to put their minds to rest, to come home and to let their anger and grief ease.  
He knew that students who were left would be cooking in the kitchen now. They had banded together in bravery, taking turn to make dinners that they had had at home, for that sense of comfort. Charles had no appetite since everything, and yet he wanted to be in the kitchen with them, under the bright lights with the fire alarm intermittently ringing out, to smell the pasta burning into the bottom of the pan.  
He remembered the summer that Erik cooked him German dishes in that pan every night, and he had to close his eyes again.  
  
It was too dangerous for Erik to show up on the property right now. Charles knew that. The military presence alone would only cause trouble, but also Erik was wanted for connection to shadier groups, for the gun-running rumours.  
  
Charles rolled his chair towards the house, where there was food waiting for him, and people who needed him. He tried not to listen out for Erik’s footfall, for his voice behind him, the feel of his hand on his shoulder. He had a home without him now.


	3. Riot.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magneto creates a riot because he's fun like that.

A thousand pins glittered in the midday sun. They were purple, with a large white ‘M’ stamped on them, for mutant. It was a badge of honour. Magneto’s followers wore the insignia of being a mutant by choice. They were not ashamed, but honoured to do so. 

He remembered a lifetime ago, with the burst of yellow on his lapel. The way shopkeepers would deny him service when he wore it. He remembered how tram drivers told him that he had to get off now, that they could go no further, and he and his mother would walk through the freezing streets to get home even though his friends were allowed to remain on.

This time, Magneto vowed to himself, they would not be ashamed. A man who accepts the slur is a man who deserves it. You fight back, or you die.

Thousands were marching, screaming, carrying banners, many just bearing the white ‘M’. Most of the crowd was made up of young people, those who had recently mutated and thought that the world could change as quickly as their appearance had. Among them Magneto saw people with elongated arms, people covered in sharp spines, people who could disappear.

Humans gawked at them from the pavement as they marched past. They were scared; scared that the monster had come out from under the bed, and was baring its teeth on their streets. They cowered behind each other, frozen in their day-to-day lives, unable to rip their eyes away from the freak show. 

Magneto despised them for their fear. When humans saw a panther stalk through the jungle, they admired its strength, its power. When they saw a mutant, they resented and feared that same power.

It was not just the civilians that feared them, but the riot police too, shining like beetles as they were under plexiglass shields and thick bulletproof vests. They encircled his march, ostensibly to protect them for the crowd. They were really there to arrest anyone who looked dangerous. They were there as the wet towel of the authority pressing down on the spark of his movement. They were there to say, you may have your march, but no more than that. Do not dare to dream of growing into a full-blown fire.

The crowd was waiting for him to speak, so he did.  
“ _MUTANT PRIDE”_ Magneto roared and the mob roared with him, sounding it out in a thousand voices.   
“ _MUTANT PRIDE, MUTANT PRIDE”.  
_ He felt the hostility of the police growing, their disquiet over what might happen. His crowd were tense to, ready for the next move. They were drawing closer to the barricade, where the police stood in a thick human barrier. Another line, telling them to go no further. Magneto was not stopping at any more lines.

He let himself feel the metal around him: in the hundreds of cars caught in the traffic jam, in the guns and bullets of the officers, in the simple pins his followers wore, and he _pushed_ off of it, soaring into the air, his purple cape flapping behind him in the wind.  
The mutants below him cheered and yelled. He saw the police men scramble for their guns, for their headsets, awaiting an order. _Did we okay a dude flying?,_ their body language screamed as they raised their guns, fearing a threat.   
“ _MUTANTS!”_ Magneto roared. “ _Our time has come! We will be bowed no longer! They think they can slaughter us and that we will let it happen. They think that we are cowards. They think we have no fight in us. MUTANTS! WE WILL NOT BE BOWED. WE_ WILL  _FIGHT BACK!”  
_ _“WE WILL FIGHT BACK”_ the crowd screamed and the police began yelling for quiet, for them to break it up. They fired shots into the air, an explosion of noise that was aggravating to Magneto. 

He clenched his fist and a thousand guns choked in the sunlight, their barrels twisting into uselessness. The city fell silent, all at once, all watching him. 

_“MUTANTS”_ he yelled. “ _MUTANTS - FIGHT BACK!”_

His mob surged down the street, stopping traffic in their path. They climbed over cars, pushing past the now-unarmed police who were screaming orders and pulling back, breaking rank, scattering in the mass of the crowd.

“WE WILL FIGHT BACK!

WE WILL FIGHT BACK!” 

Magneto flicked his wrist and the cars tumulted out of the way of the mob, flying sideways and smashing into walls, crashing into other walls. Mutants drew their claws and surged forward as the civilian broke their trance, as they realised that the freak show had broken loose from their cages, and were damned angry.  
He watched as his foot-soldiers took the chant as their own, as they swarmed forward with a visceral hatred, with passion.  
They would not be passive this time around, he vowed to himself as he watched the riot. This time, they would be heard. 

 

 


End file.
